Teaching | Understanding 2 Peter: Men Spoke From God (2 Peter 1:16-2:3)

In 1981 the movie Clash of the Titans came out which depicted on the big screen the Greek myth of Perseus. It famously featured a claymation Medusa emerging from the shadows with snakes writhing out of her head. We’d probably laugh at the outdated special effects today, but for the time Clash of the Titans captured the imaginations of audiences worldwide because this myth highlighted timeless virtues of courage, hope, and wisdom. Whether or not the events actually occurred didn’t matter. That’s not what we’re talking about when it comes to Jesus. When Peter refers to the event of the Transfiguration in his second letter he’s goes out of his way to make clear that he’s not devising a clever myth. He’s not telling a fictional story in order to highlight a timeless truth. He’s reporting an eyewitness account of an historical event in which Jesus Christ displays his divine glory. This divine glory serves to confirm the prophecies of the Old Testament as the very words of God. The gospel comes to us as good news about God’s redemption in real space and time. Our hope rests not on abstract ideas, but concrete reality. Not in principles and myths, but a person. This is Understanding 2nd Peter.